Blog Post #6

One large piece of technology that I have learned about from someone else was a drone. To be more specific, one of the expensive drones with the built in camera that was attached to it. I was aware of the toy of a drone that would fly up a little bit until it turned a little and spiked down into the ground, but the difference from that and the one I now know about was the quality, and the features the ones with cameras had installed into it.

Now if this is your first time discovering that there is a difference between toy drones and professional drones you might be wondering what is the difference? Well theres more than you would think. I first discovered this piece of technology a couple months ago, and it was on set for a movie that had a fairly large budget. I was confused when one of the people on th tech crew brought out a large hard shell box with a drone in it, so I asked him what we were going to do with it. He told me there was a 4k state of the art video camera in it and we were going to use it to shoot an "over the head shot" using this drone. I was surprised to learn of this and asked what would happen if the drone tilted a little in the air and came crashing down. This is when he told me he actually had to get a drone certification to use this drone, and he explained to me how these high end drones were less prone to actually crash, unlike the cheap ones I was used to using when I was growing up. 

This leads into the question, "Is a drone the best way to film things in the film industry?" and "Did this piece of technology really benefit society as a whole?" To answer the first question, it depends on the scene you are shooting. Obviously if you are shooting a car chase and need a birds eye view shot to follow the cars, then yes the drone shot is the best way to get this shot. below is more information if you are curious about some of the more specifics on how to use a drone when filming. 

https://www.nfi.edu/drone-filming/

To answer the second question, you need to look at the question in a couple of different ways. In one case you can see how this could be a concern of privacy. How is a flying piece of technology with a camera, going to benefit the general public and not put its privacy at risk. Well for one thing it's illegal to use the drone to spy on people, but this also doesn't stop some people. To be honest there is no concrete way to ensure this piece of technology doesn't hurt peoples privacy. It is a major concern and there have been many major cases where drones have been confiscated and people have gotten in trouble for not using their drones ethically. I've included an article to back up my findings. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenrice1/2019/02/04/eyes-in-the-sky-the-public-has-privacy-concerns-about-drones/?sh=4cbab8c06984

To sum up this piece of technology has its benefits for getting cool film shots and going places to get a piece of cinematography that no one ever could, but this comes at the cost at hurting people's privacy. There are more bad things than good when we look at this invention, but I personally feel that this isn't a problem with the technology but more of a moral problem with the people using it. 

Blog Post #5

I can't help but notice when I look on websites such as ANTIWAR.COM I find myself reading from very strong antiwar writers who I have never head of before. Why is this? I decided to take a deeper look at the article and here are some things I found. 

Above I have included the website because if my professor hadn't shared the website with me, then I would have never found it, so of course I don't expect you to be able to find it either. This also raises another question, why are articles like this one never seen by the general public? Isn't it a little odd how we never see any websites or writers who are very anti war? Well the reasoning for this is because of censorship. The government doesn't want it's general public to see all this propaganda against it's precious war, and the government needs to make sure that web browsers such as google and bing aren't promoting this, but instead are on the side of trying to hide it or at least not promote it as to not bring more of the public on the side of there being no war. 

                    

Todays technology is getting so advanced with AI, Artificial Intelligence, has so much control on exactly what you can see and it knows everything you do. AI is a a software that monitors everything you see and has the control to monitor and show you exactly what the government wants you so see and do, basically brainwashing you. This is how they are able to control these anti war writers and anti war websites by physically blocking these  websites as to not share the agenda these websites have with the public. 

There are many examples of proof to support the previous statement made, one of which being the large company PayPal shutting down accounts that were making anti war publications. Recently there was a campaign that censored independent publishers who were very against the war between Nato and the US. They were shutting down all their accounts and only the ones that were specifically against war. This articles goes into much more detail:

 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/05/04/uofx-m04.html

Another example of anti war examples are Facebook and instagram deleting posts off their platforms that were anti war. The U.S. government encouraged Instagram and Facebook to get rid of any posts that supported of an Iranian commander and were against the war with Iran. Instagram went as far as to actually remove the Iranian commander's instagram account so he could no longer post. This website goes into more detail about this incident: 

https://mronline.org/2020/01/23/u-s-clearing-anti-war-voices-off-social-media-in-vast-censorship-operation/

Blog Post #4

    Motion Pictures was not created overnight by any means. It went through many stages of inventions being created and perfected in order to make progress in what we see on the big screen today. The first invention on the path to motion pictures was the invention of the phenakistoscope in 1832 by Joseph Plateau. “The phenakistoscope was a twirling disk that shows images that are similar but with a slight movement, and as the disk spins you only see each picture for a fraction of a second, making it look like the image is moving.” (Cook) This was the first invention that made images move in a way never seen before to man. The next invention was the daguerreotype which was the first successful form of photography. It was invented in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre from France. “This creation led to the zoogyroscope which directly relates to the creation of the first motion picture projector. The zoogyroscope was created by Muybridge in 1879 and it helped him project his pictures to an audience in San Francisco just a year later.” (Pickford) This still hasn’t gotten us to the creation of Motion Pictures which was in 1888. The invention that helped us actually develop the first motion picture was the Kinetograph which was invented through the years of 1897, which was when Edison patented it, to 1891.

    The Kinetoscope was invented by Thomas Edison. Edison patented his invention but after he created it he saw it as a meaningless invention, to be used by children as a toy. “The invention’s original purpose was to try and help him sell more of his record players and more of his phonographs but since he was unable to accurately match the sound with pictures he dismissed it.”(Chodos) He didn't realize its potential until it was used at the Brooklyn Institute of Art and Sciences in a presentation which was an instant hit by the audience in 1893. This started the demand for Kinetoscopes as they were being sold all over the world. This led to a massive change in our world. It impacted everyone, no matter how old you were, where you came from or what gender you were, movies had everyone's interest. Parents were able to send their children to the cinema with 25 cents and they would be entertained for the entire day, and would come home with various sorts of tableware, known as “dish night” as an incentive for parents to send their children to the movies for the day. The movies had the most significant impact during the great depression. During a time when everyone and everything was terrible the movie theater was a place you could go to unwind and forget about the terrible economic state the country was in. The invention of motion pictures had many great impacts on the human race as a whole but one are that it hurt greatly was the live theater industry. People would go to see a live play as entertainment but once motion pictures were created, a large part of the audience switched to motion pictures creating a big problem for the theatic industry. 

Works Cited: 

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200102/history.cfm

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00530-013-0322-4

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pickford-early-history-motion-pictures/

https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture

https://faculty.washington.edu/baldasty/JAN13.htm

https://filmlifestyle.com/when-were-movies-invented/

https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures/origins-of-motion-pictures/

https://www.britannica.com/technology/Kinetoscope

Blog Post #2

Something that I learned about the Supreme Court that I didn't know was that they are in the Court for multiple decades after the president that elected them leaves office. I personally didn't know very much about the Supreme Court before watching this video and I was always under the impression that the President elected a Supreme Court and once the presidents term ended so did the Supreme Court Justices. 

Personally the most important take-away point that I learned about the Supreme Court is that they don't use the Constitution that was written in 1787, or 1791 but instead they actually use the Post Civil War Amendments, the 19th Amendment. I was under the impression that they used the Constitution from 1787 but the video informed me that my understanding was incorrect. 

I was most surprised to learn that people were actually held in bondage during voting. I was aware that Native Americans and Women couldn't vote but I didn't realize people were actually being held in bondage just because voting was happening. 

The video had a large impact on the way I thought about the Supreme Court because it showed me how the progress of the way the Supreme Court viewed different types of people under the "We The People" statement. They went from not seeing the Native Americans, The African Americans, and the Women as part of the people in "We The People", whereas today they do. We have come a long way as a country and I believe we have changed for the better. 

Blog Post #3

Out of the eight Values of Free Expression I would personally say the one that resonates with me the most is the Individual Self Freedom Fulfillment. This value is the most meaningful to me because it speaks on the importance of being able to freely talk about yourself and to be able to express ones personal identity. This means you have the right to be who you are and create your own persona through social media and speech. Without this value an individual would have to worry about what they post, every single time they post and I am personally very grateful for not having to worry about this. I feel we as a country take this value for granted. 

    In other countries like China they don't have the luxury to be able to freely express themselves online. This is something we Americans get to freely express but I don't think most of us realize how lucky we truly are. If you were a citizen in China and wanted to express an opinion or an emotion on social media you would be punished to the highest level, all for trying to show your own identity. We also take for granted how much easier it is for us to grow out of our shell, and truly become identified with our inner being by expressing ourselves to hundreds of people with a click of a button. This doesn't even mention how well we can get to know other individuals through seeing their identities by what they choose to post and how they choose to act. If we looked at the relationships with each other as a community in both China and America we can see that the percentage of humans who are interacting with each other is exponentially higher in America than those relationships in China and this is solely because we are able to communicate with one another online, and in a free manner. 

    Another way the Individual Speech Fulfillment Value helps us is to help us stay connected. Through social media websites, like Instagram for example, we get to freely express and talk about certain real world things that are happening right now, without having any boundaries. One example that I have seen in very recent news is the passing of the Queen. Through social media people are able to mourn the loss of such an influential and well known woman through posts, comments, and memories posted of her life. Because of this Individual Speech Value people can gather around the world, and not only see what others are saying but actually contribute their own thoughts and emotions during this difficult time. Another recent and more positive thread I have seen on social media is people chatting about going back to school for the new school year. Have heard both negative and positive things about going back to college and personally, it made me more excited to get back to High Point which shows us the emotional value being free and connected holds.The Individual Speech Fulfillment Value helps us not only stay connected to people we hold near and dear to us, but to people all around the world. 

Blog Post #1

My personal top five news sources are Google News, BBC News, CNN, Noovell, and Yahoo! News. 

The links for these websites are: 

Google News: https://news.google.com/topstories?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en

BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news

CNN: https://www.cnn.com

Noovell: https://noovell.com/en

Yahoo! News: https://news.yahoo.com

The first news source I use is Google News. Google is a company that has built up a fantastic reputation over the years and since it is the #1 search engine they are expected to also be the #1 news source. They have reported time and time again on current day news articles that not only go above and beyond but are also very reliable which isn't always the case in todays day and age. The reason I would recommend this news source is because of the many anonymous sources online who support the news source. While there is many negative articles, that is to be expected its the Internet but the positive outweigh the negative reviews which is enough for me. 

For my second news source I choose BBC News. I personally enjoy this news source because of the way most articles are worded. The writing style this news source uses for most of its articles really draws me in and I enjoy reading from this writing style. My main reason for recommending this news source is because of the popularity behind it. I know hundreds of people who use this news source and even though some people are against it, it still is held accountable for what it posts because of its popularity. 

The third news source I use is CNN. Now CNN is a very controversial choice but politics aside I like to read from their website. They report on stories that not every news source uses and I find some of the less popular articles they produce to be very intriguing. I would only recommend this news source again, because of its popularity. Almost everyone knows of this news source and therefore I feel as if they are held to the highest expectation. If they write a bad story they aren't going to hear the end of it, and therefore I feel as this makes them very careful about what they report. 

For my fourth news source I very much enjoy reading from Noovell. I know most people aren't as familiar with Noovell as some of my other news sources picks but nonetheless its very popular. The reason I am drawn to this source is for the layout of its articles. The way this website is setup draws me in and even if I am not in the mood to read, I can go on this website and they way they display their content sways me to want to read. This reason is why I would recommend this news source to someone else. 

My fifth and last news source is Yahoo! News. My reasoning for this is because I like to use two different browsing companies to view my news. Yahoo isn't as popular as Google is but it is still a very well rounded company. This means it's also expected to be held to the highest standard of accurate news reporting. I find it very interesting to compare and contrast the news stories from Google and Yahoo because they are similar in what they both do, with their browser/news reporting combination. I would recommend this news source to others because it offers a interesting range of news reports.